Long Way From Home
by memoria in aeterna
Summary: Everything is quiet between Ian and Mickey during the few days before Mickey kills his father.


**a minuscule drabble with **** angst angst angst rockin errywhere** and what I predict will happen in 3x07 (aka what I wrote a week ago and put off uploading for this long)

* * *

Everything between them is quiet during the few days before Mickey kills his father.

The bell above the Kash n' Grab's doorway hasn't moved in hours, and now Ian's shift comes to a close as the pastels of early evening bleed into the sky. He and Mickey finish unpacking cans onto shelves, working in a silence laden with everything they don't know how to say. A sense of wariness, of inconsolable sadness, hangs in the air in the form of fleeting eye contact and conflicted emotions and _no son of mine's a faggot._

Mickey stares at the packets of generic-brand ramen and tries very hard not to think about anything. Not the way his swollen eye aches or the way Ian's expression holds the weight of heartbreak, and especially not the taste of blood on his lips yesterday and how he couldn't tell Ian it was all for him.

He glances at Ian and wonders why he ever got so close to him, and why he doesn't regret it.

* * *

The silence of the boys' home is punctuated only by the intersecting rhythms of breathing. In he darkness, all Ian can do is lie in his bunk and listen, focus on the patterns exhales and not on the endless, involuntary envisioned of the night before, and how he and Mickey will never be the same again.

All he can see when he closes his eyes is the glint of Terry's gun and too much blood and Mickey's body atop someone else's, someone forced upon him by the very reason they can never truly be together.

Ian listens to the intersecting a rhythms of breathing and wishes his own would stop for a while.

* * *

Though the Milkovich house has never been much of a home, Mickey feels more like a stranger within its walls than ever. He walks the halls like a ghost, avoiding Terry's beacon-like glare as best he can.

According to Terry, Svetlana may have "fucked the faggot out of him", but nothing can change that it had to be done in the first place. And that's enough to sever the already frayed ties between father and son forever.

He shouldn't care, Mickey rationalizes as he watches Terry doze on the couch with a beer in hand. He shouldn't heed to what this man thinks. All Terry's ever done is deliver destruction, pain and abuse and every reason Mickey's afraid to be who he is.

Mickey glares at his sleeping form as he leaves the house, front door slamming behind him.

* * *

"Okay, I don't wan it to be like this, Mick," Ian says as he enters the Kash n' Grab when the morning is just dissolving into afternoon. He knows the emotion displayed may drive Mickey away, but has has to add, "I miss us."

He hates that apart from being lovers, they've also stopped being friends. Mickey doesn't hang around while Ian trains, Mickey doesn't laugh and make conversation while they work in the store, and it's almost like what used to be is on the brink of disappearance.

Despite that Ian just made them sound like they're on an episode of_ Glee_, Mickey nods like he understands what he means, looking at the racks of candy and not at Ian.

"Don't worry," Mickey assures. "I know what I'm doing."

"And what exactly are you doing?"

Mickey at last looks at Ian and realizes, with a lightheaded feeling and an anchor in his heart, that this thing between them has grown into something like tacit love until it became too late for Mickey to notice. But, as Terry proved, never too late for someone to remind him of why he should've.

"I know exactly," Mickey replies, a determined set to his jaw, "what I'm gonna do."

* * *

Come for a walk with me," Mickey proposes, thumb grazing his bottom lip as he looks as Ian with desperately persuasive eyes.

Unquestioningly, Ian follows. They travel side-by-side across cracked pavements that later become dirt trails, Mickey leading them seemingly nowhere.

"You'll see," he would respond if Ian would finally ask.

After a short while longer they come to a stop within the graffiti-ed walls of an abandoned part of the El station. Old, forgotten train tracks cross the ground. On them, unconscious, lies Terry Milkovich. Mickey lifts his shirt to expose a compact pistol tucked into his waistband.

Ian's eyes widen. "Mickey, you don't—there has to be something else you can—you don't have to do this."

With more sureness than anything he's ever realized since he accidentally fell in love with Ian Gallagher, Mickey replies, "Yeah, I do."

And they try to feel liberated as they share a lengthy kiss before Mickey pulls the trigger.


End file.
